mailmodo-hamburger

A Complete Guide to Preview, Test, And Validate AMP Emails in 2024

ByAquibur Rahman

Share

Linkedin logo
Twitter logo
copy link
Facebook logo
Whatsapp logo
Pinterest logo
mail logo

Creating an AMP email requires coding, and thus you need to invest time and effort in creating an AMP email from scratch. As a result, you want to ensure that your emails are rendered properly across email clients.

To ensure this, you have to test your AMP emails. So, let's understand how to preview, verify, and test your AMP emails.

Table of contents

What to do before sending AMP emails?

Testing AMP emails before sending them can help you avoid any room for errors like:

  • emails not displaying your HTML email correctly

  • fonts not rendering, etc.

Unfortunately, since AMP is a relatively new MIME type, very few tools are available to do so. But, you can use ways prescribed by the AMP project to preview, test, and validate the AMPHTML and create a fallback HTML version.

How to preview an AMP email?

The preview option shows how your email will look in the recipients' inboxes. You can preview the AMP page just as you usually would preview any other static HTML site. There's no build step or preprocessing required. You can choose to:

  • Open the page directly in the web browser from the file system (certain elements would not work due to the XMLHttpRequests failing).

  • Use a local webserver like Nginx or Apache 2. (Tip: For a quick web server, run python -m SimpleHTTPServer.)

image5.jpg

Next, ensure that the AMP page you have is actually valid AMP, or else it won't even get discovered and distributed by the other 3rd-party platforms like Google Search. To do this, follow the following steps.

  1. Open your webpage in your web browser.

  2. Add "#development=1" to it's URL, for instance,

http://localhost:8000/released.amp.html#development=1

  1. Open the Chrome DevTools console and then check for validation errors.

image6.jpg

How to test AMP emails?

Ensure a great user experience by testing your AMP emails before sending them to a large audience.

1. Testing checklist

  1. Include an HTML or a plain text version of your AMP email. Email clients that don't support AMP will display this as a fallback.

  2. Ensure your AMP is valid by following the steps outlined in Validate AMP emails.

  3. Review AMP for email Supported CSS to ensure the CSS you're using is supported across all email clients.

  4. Try your email in the AMP playground and ensure all dynamic features such as forms work correctly.

image1.jpg

2. Testing specific to email clients

Email clients that support AMP also provide developer documentation containing additional guidelines and requirements.

How to validate AMP emails?

AMP emails depend on the AMP JS library to enable rich interactive and dynamic experiences for readers. For this reason, email providers need your messages to be validated. Valid AMP markup guarantees emails are safe and exceed user experience standards.

image3.jpg

There are many ways to confirm an email as a valid AMP Email. They will all produce the very same result, so choose whichever one suits your development style the most!

image4.jpg

• Web-based validator

The AMP web-based validator supports the AMP for email platform. Use the web-based validator by pasting your AMP email into the tool. It will flag any validator errors directly inline.

• Command-line validator

You can validate AMP emails files using the AMP HTML validator command-line tool.

  1. Installation

    • Make sure you have Node.js with its package manager 'npm' on your system.

    • Install the AMP HTML validator command-line tool by running the following command: npm install -g amphtml-validator.

  2. Usage

After installing the command-line tool, run the following command after replacing it with your file containing the AMP email content.

amphtml-validator --html_format AMP4EMAIL <amphtml file>

If the email is valid, the command-line tool will turn out as PASS. If it is invalid, it will return with the errors it found.

AMP playground

You can also validate AMP emails using the AMP playground. Like the web-based validator, paste your AMP email into the tool, and the playground will flag any validator errors directly inline.

Validate delivered emails

Sometimes your delivered AMP emails may be invalid even though the email markup you drafted has already been validated by tools documented on this page. The most common reason this usually happens is that your ESP modified your email markup and made it invalid after you have sent your email to your ESP for delivery. For example, if your ESP is SparkPost and you haven't configured HTTPS tracking pixels with SparkPost, SparkPost will add an insecure HTTP tracking pixel to your email. Since AMP emails only allow HTTPS images, your AMP Email will be invalid.

To check whether an email delivered to your inbox is valid AMP:

  1. Download the AMP Email as an EML file from your email client.

  2. Open the AMP playground.

  3. Click on "IMPORT EMAIL" and select the ".eml" file you just downloaded.

The AMP validator isn't just a convenience for you during development; email providers supporting AMP emails will automatically fall back to the provided HTML or Plain Text MIME types if your email isn't valid. Thus, an AMP Email should only be sent if it passes the validator.

AMP for email best practices

AMP allows for exciting new immersive, and engaging content in an email. However, you must follow these best practices while designing emails to ensure the highest returns:

1. Speed

When using amp-list' to fetch content dynamically, include a placeholder to keep the integrity of the structure of the AMP components. The placeholder should be as similar in layout as possible to the document after returning the requested data. This ensures the message size isn't changing or mutating the layout significantly.

2. Mobile

Ensure your message looks good on all screen sizes by using CSS media queries to identify the device. You should test messages on mobile devices to ensure the layout is correct and components work as expected. Because swiping is common on mobile email apps, take proper steps to ensure your users interact with your content. With amp-carousel, you can add the control attribute to make mobile navigation buttons visible.

image2.jpg

Other AMP related tips and tricks you should know:

  • The AMP for email playground doesn't proxy XHRs, but some email providers do.

  • The AMP MIME part should appear before the HTML MIME part in your email to ensure maximum compatibility across email clients.

  • The src attribute of amp-list, action-xhr of amp-form, the src for amp-img, or the href attribute of a tag cannot be mutated by amp-bind.

  • Your messages should include a static HTML version if a user is taken to the HTML version of the message or if that user forwards the message.

  • Be careful with overflowing margin in CSS: they may not get rendered due to an AMP layout limitation.

Get a sample AMP email in your inbox

Experience the power of interactivity right now

Simplify AMP email with Mailmodo

Mailmodo is a complete email marketing service that allows you to build interactive AMP emails without coding. You can also preview your email content while editing the template before sending it. It also allows you to validate and send test emails whenever required. If you would like to send high-quality AMP emails without losing any time and without any hassle, sign up at Mailmodo today.

What you should do next

Hey there, thanks for reading till the end. Here are 3 ways we can help you grow your business:

  1. Talk to an email expert. Need someone to take your email marketing to the next level? Mailmodo’s experts are here for you. Schedule a 30-minute email consultation. Don’t worry, it’s on the house. Book a meet here.

  2. Send emails that bring higher conversions. Mailmodo is an ESP that helps you to create and send app-like interactive emails with forms, carts, calendars, games, and other widgets for higher conversions. Get started for free.

  3. Get smarter with our email resources. Explore all our knowledge base here and learn about email marketing, marketing strategies, best practices, growth hacks, case studies, templates, and more. Access guides here.

What should you do next?

Thanks for reading till the end. Here are 3 ways we can help you grow your business:

Group_102411_1fd1b38156

Get smarter with our email resources

Explore our email marketing guides, ebooks and other resources to master email marketing.

Transactional_email_within_your_marketing_plan_0532bc94ee

Do better email marketing with Mailmodo

Send app-like interactive emails with forms, carts, calendars, games, etc. to boost email ROI.

support_820ceb7ecf

Talk to an email expert

Get a 30-min. free email consultation with a Mailmodo expert to optimize your email marketing.

Was this post useful?

Improve your email marketing

With interactive emails, smarter automation workflows, AI-powered email content and higher conversions

Group_1110165311
Union_1_6200367a50